Melina’s head dropped forward on her chest and she awoke with a start.
For a moment she could not think where she was.
Then the rattle of the bus over the rough roads, the stifling atmosphere all around her, the glass windows fogged with heat and smoke, brought everything flooding back to her mind.
It had been the longest day she could ever remember. They had moved at quite a good speed between stops, but every hour or so the passengers had disembarked to sit drinking mint tea in some flyblown café or to eat Arab food, which Melina found extremely unappetising.
There was no question of Bing and herself ordering anything else. So, because she was tired and hungry she forced herself to swallow mouthfuls of camel meat and other more anonymous dishes, which smelt so disgusting that she dared not even guess their origin.
Bing had not spoken to her since they left Fez except to give a brief command to dismount from the bus or to mount it again and she understood from watching the other couples that this was the usual behaviour of a Moslem to his wife.
Meekly she walked behind him when they disembarked, seated herself in the worst places in the cafés, which, fortunately, meant that she usually had her back to the other people in the room.
It was correct for her to keep her head bowed and to raise her yashmak only a fraction above her mouth when she ate and she knew that the other Moslem men would, traditionally, not look in her direction for fear of insulting the man she belonged to. She felt that her anonymity was, therefore, easy to preserve and it gave her a sense of security.
Now, however, she realised with something of a shock that they were arriving in Marrakesh.
Through the clear windscreen at the front of the bus she had a vision of high ramparts, red-gold in colour extending with geometrical perfection into the distance and of a sky glorious in crimson, flame and yellow as the sun set behind the tall palm trees.
This was Marrakesh, she thought. The place that Winston Churchill loved. A City of a thousand date palms, enchanted parks and gardens of pomegranates and apricots.
She remembered now that the red ramparts were almost a thousand years old and, as they passed through them, she saw ahead Islam’s most famous minaret, the Koutoubia, changing its colour even as she looked at it, from ivory to brown, from the pink of a seashell to the flaming red of the last rays of the setting sun.
She longed to speak to Bing and to ask him questions. But she knew she could say nothing, only watch with fascination as the bus drew up in a great square filled with crowds of people.
There were shouts and exclamations from the other travellers as they waved to their friends or called out their excitement and appreciation of having arrived safely after what was to them a most dangerous journey.
And then they were hurrying and crowding out of the bus and Melina and Bing, moving more slowly, were the last to descend.
The noise and confusion outside was almost overpowering. It was very hot. Melina could feel the sweat gathering on her forehead.
As they moved through the crowd she found it difficult not to be pushed away from Bing by those too intent on peering at the amusements around them to look where they were going.
She had heard often enough of Djemma El Fna, the famous market square in Marrakesh, and now that she saw it for herself it seemed even more incredible than the descriptions she had read so avidly in her father’s books.
There were snake-charmers and fire eaters, acrobats from the souks, daring Shleh boys with provocatively wiggling hips, grave-eyed medicine men advising customers on how to prolong their virility, sword dancers and Berber dancers, water-carriers with straw hats decorated with brightly coloured wool and hundreds of beggars in patched tatters holding out supplicating hands to the tourists or to anyone else who would listen to them.
Melina was wide-eyed with interest and astonishment, but Bing moved purposefully through the crowd, seldom looking to right or left.
This was the great El Dorado of the South, the destination that camel caravans from the desert journeyed to as they had done for a thousand years.
But Bing was concerned with only one thing, his concentration pinpointed on what he had come to find.
Melina kept up with him breathlessly. Now they were moving on the fringe of the crowd. Crossing the road, they came under the shadow of some great trees that overhung a crumbling wall.
The swift twilight of the East had almost gone, darkness was falling. The minaret was already silhouetted against the sable sky in which the stars were coming out one by one.
There was a gap in the wall where the bricks had fallen away from the pavement into the garden beyond.
Bing glanced quickly over his shoulder and climbed through it, leaving Melina to scramble after him.
In the privacy of the garden that lay beyond, he turned to give her his hand and to help her over the fallen stones until her feet touched softer ground. They had to force their way through some rough overgrown shrubs, the flowers of which gave off a sickly, almost overwhelmingly sweet fragrance.
After a few moments they came to a tumbledown edifice with a pillared front.
The stars were brighter and the moon was rising. They were able to see quite clearly what lay round them.
“Where are we?” Melina asked in a whisper.
“Safe, I hope, for the moment,” Bing answered.
There were two steps leading up to what appeared to be a small Temple. Bing sat down on the top one, leant his back against the pillar and gave a sigh of exhaustion and relief before he stretched his arms above his head.
“I’m stiff,” he said, “So must you be.”
“Every bone in my body is aching,” Melina answered. “But I am too thankful to be here to worry about it. What is this place?”
“A tomb,” Bing told her.
Melina gave a little start and he smiled.
“Relax,” he said. “The occupant has been dead for hundreds of years and only the faithful believe that he walks these grounds at night. Anyway, his ghost, real or otherwise, will protect us now that it is dark from inquisitive strangers.”
“Do you mean we are going to stay here?” Melina asked incredulously.
She sat down beside Bing as she spoke and pulled off her yashmak. Her face was hot and wet and it was with a feeling of real pleasure that she was able to pull out her vanity case from beneath the enveloping folds of her robe and powder her nose.
“You don’t mean to say that you have brought that with you?” Bing asked in an amused voice.
“Do you really think that any woman would travel without her handbag?” Melina enquired. “I attached it to the belt of my dress.”
Bing laughed and somehow the sound was human and comforting.
Melina put her vanity case away and turned towards him.
“I want to know what’s going to happen,” she said. “It has been ghastly being silent all day, longing to ask you questions, but not daring to open my lips.”
“A good lesson in femininity,” Bing chuckled.
“Don’t you dare say that!” Melina retorted. “After all those beastly meals and the discomfort of the bus – you at least owe me an explanation of what you intend to do now.”
Bing looked across into the dark shadow of the trees.
“There is only one matter that concerns me,” he said, and his voice was suddenly grave and deep.
“I know that,” Melina said. “But how are we going to find him?”
“Someone will come for us here later on tonight, I hope,” Bing said. “If they are not too afraid.”
“And if they are?” Melina enquired.
“Then we shall have to work without them.”
“If only we could make a plan – ” she cried, then stopped and looked at him, her eyes searching through the darkness to discern the expression on his face.
“You have a plan,” she then asked him accusingly.
“No,” Bing answered, but he hesitated before he spoke and she did not believe him.
“Don’t shut me out,” Melina begged. “I am in this with you. I have a right to know what you intend to do.”
She thought with a kind of desperation that it would always be like this between them.
Bing, reserved, taciturn, keeping his thoughts and feelings from her as if a wall as high as the red ramparts existed between them.
‘He does not trust women,’ she thought, and felt a sudden pang of loneliness and, at the same time, a desperate urge to prove her own worthiness to be trusted.
“Tell me, please tell me,” she urged him, only to know that her pleading was a mistake and that it had driven Bing further away from her for ever.
“There is nothing to tell,” he answered. “You realise how difficult and discreet communications must be. Rasmin will have done what he can. It remains to be seen what support I will be given here.”
“What about the hotel in Fez?” Melina asked. “What will they think when we don’t return and they find all our clothes in the rooms we occupied and the bill left unpaid?”
“Don’t worry about them,” Bing answered. “Mr. and Mrs. Cutter were called to America at a moment’s notice owing to the death of Mr. Cutter’s father. Their luggage was packed and sent to the airport to follow them on the next available aeroplane.”
“And the car?” Melina asked. “Moulay Ibrahim’s men will have reported that we left it there.”
“It will have told them little,” Bing replied. “The number plates will have been changed and a young man respected in the town will have been relating to his friends all day how he had to walk home having run out of petrol.”
“You think of everything,” Melina said, as she had said it before only to be quickly shushed into silence by Bing’s raised hand.
“No compliments,” he said quickly. “It’s unlucky.”
“What about our passports?” Melina asked.
“They are in my jacket pocket,” Bing replied. “The ink has already faded and, on paper, you are no longer married to me.”
Melina longed to reply that it was the one thing she wanted above all else.
Then, like a nightmare from the past, there flashed before her eyes the petulant face of Lileth Schuster.
She could hear again the passion in her voice when she told Bing that she loved him.
‘Forget her,’ Melina longed to say to him. ‘Forget her for she is hard and cruel and will bring you only unhappiness.’
She felt in that moment as if Bing was her son instead of a full-grown man. Everything that was maternal in her longed to protect him, to save him from being hurt, to prevent his faith and love from being destroyed.
She knew instinctively with each one of her five senses that Lileth Schuster was a bad woman, just as she knew that her own love was something real, true and enduring.
It would not matter to her, she thought, if she had to live like this for the rest of her life. A despised woman in the Moslem creed, a creature of no importance and of no consequence, so long as she could be with Bing. Better this than the emancipation of the West if only, in fact, Bing could be with her and she loved him, even if he never knew it.
Bing moved restlessly and Melina guessed that under his outward appearance of calm, he was anxious, tense and irritated by the inevitable delay of any action.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Not for any Arab food,” Melina replied, thinking with a sudden nausea of the sweet softness of the camel meat.
“Shall I go and see if I can find you some fruit?” Bing suggested, but she knew his solicitation was not really on her behalf, but because he wanted to do something rather than sit waiting.
“Must you leave me here?” she asked. “Let me come with you.”
“It would be safer for you to remain where you are,” he said. “If you hear a noise, move into the tomb. No one will go there unless it is one of our friends.”
“It does not look as if they treat a cemetery with much respect,” Melina protested, thinking of the broken wall, the overgrown unkempt garden and the stained and cracked pillars against which they were leaning.
“Que sera sera,” Bing remarked. “In Moslem countries everything is left in the hands of Allah. You must realise that by this time.”
“I only wish I knew whether Allah was for us or against us in this project,” Melina said a little sarcastically.
To her astonishment Bing answered her with complete seriousness.
“He is with us,” he answered. “I have never doubted it for one moment since I undertook to find the boy.”
For an instant they stared at each other.
She thought in the moonlight that his expression was hard and then his hand came out and touched her cheek.
“You are a brave girl, Melina,” he said. “Your father would have been proud of you.”
She felt the sudden tears prick her eyes, both at the kindness of his voice and because he had praised her with words she valued above all others.
Then, before she could answer him, he had gone. The darkness swallowed him up and she was alone.
Because she was afraid, she retreated into the entrance of the tomb. There the air was stale and unpleasant and, after a moment she moved back again to the step, hoping that a little breeze would reach her to relieve the sultry heat which was still almost overpowering.
Melina longed to throw off her djellabah, but knew it would be unwise. She wondered in what state her evening dress would be after this and thought with a little twist of her lips that if it could survive the heat and discomfort of the bus ride, it was the best advertisement that nylon could ever have.
It was then she realised how desperately tired she was, after more than twenty-four hours without sleep save for the catnaps she had taken with a nodding head on the journey.
She tried sitting with her back against the pillars and her legs stretched out in front of her, but it was too uncomfortable. Finally, she curled herself up on the top step of the temple and laid her aching head on her folded arms.
‘I never believed that I would want to sleep on the ground,’ was her last thought before she slept.
She was deep in a dreamless slumber in which every muscle and nerve in her body were utterly and completely relaxed when she felt herself being lifted into someone’s arms.
She was not afraid and some instinct stronger than thought told her that it was Bing.
Without opening her eyes and still far away from consciousness, she felt him carrying her somewhere, his feet walking surely over the ground, his arms strong and protective and infinitely comforting.
She must have drifted away into oblivion because, when he set her down very gently, she had forgotten that he was carrying her. She was on something softer, something that gave beneath her body and yet was not a bed.
She had a sudden feeling as his arms drew away from her that he was going to leave her and she wanted to cry out to him, to beg him to stay with her, to leave his arms around her and never let her go. But she was too tired, too far away to make the effort and only the thought was there amongst the clouds of slumber.
Then, as she felt herself alone and without him, she suddenly felt a pressure on her lips. It was gentle, sweet and undemanding, but like a streak of lightning the leaping flame that she had known before burnt within her and she knew a sudden ecstasy that made her feel as though the stars had dropped from the sky and settled in her eyes.
Her lips longed to hold onto his with passion and an insistence he could not refuse, but she was too far away. She struggled against the sleep that possessed her and as she did so the moment passed and his lips had gone.
She wanted to cry out for what she had lost, for the emptiness that was all that was left her, but she realised that he was settling himself beside her, his shoulder against her arm.
His hip touched her hip and then his arm was thrown protectively across her. She could feel it there, heavy and yet giving her a sense of security such as nothing else could have done.
Instinctively she turned towards him. She laid her cheek against his shoulder and without conscious thought of what she was doing, cuddled her body against his.
He drew her a little closer and then he too slept –
*
It must have been a cock that awakened her, a cock crowing triumphantly with all the strength and power of its tiny lungs. Melina opened her eyes and saw above her not a ceiling but the branches of trees bright with blossom, amongst which birds moved and fluttered and sang their morning song of delight.
She turned her head and saw that Bing lying close beside her was still sleep. For the first time she realised how young he was and now that he was off his guard she saw that he was also both sensitive and vulnerable.
There was something very gentle in the curve of his lips. There was something boy-like in the hollows of his cheeks in the sharp curve of his jaw.
His arm was still flung across her. Melina realised that to move would awaken him, so she lay still, looking at him, wondering why out of all the men in the world she had had to give her heart to someone who loved another woman and for whom she herself only existed as a useful tool.
As if the scrutiny of her eyes aroused him, Bing was suddenly alert. He awoke as men always do who live in the shadow of danger.
His eyes opened and every nerve in his body awoke at the same time.
“Melina!” he exclaimed. “We should have been awake before this.”
“What time is it?” she asked.
Bing glanced at the sun with its rays already percolating through the branches of the trees to turn the sandy ground beneath them into a carpet of gold.
“About six o’clock, I should think,” he replied and rose to his feet.
Melina saw that they had been lying on a heap of grass such as the natives cut for their animals and which is carried in great high bundles on the backs of incredibly small donkeys.
She too rose and noticed a little distance away at the end of the garden the tomb from which Bing must have carried her the night before.
It was then that she looked beyond the garden walls and she saw a sight that made her eyes widen, an exclamation of astonishment fall from her lips. The Atlas Mountains, snow-capped and indescribably beautiful against the pale sky, were shining in all their majesty.
“They are the most breathtaking mountains in the world,” Bing said, following the direction of her eyes.
The contrast between the vivid, gleaming snowcapped peaks and the scarlet and purple bougainvillaea that ran riot over the walls of the garden was too glorious for description.
“I have seen them,” Melina said softly. “At last I have seen them!”
As if he had no time to be ecstatic over the beauties of nature, Bing put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a little push.
“You will find a broken fountain a little to the right of you,” he said. “Do not drink the water but you can wash in it and then we will go in search of breakfast and our friends who have failed to come to our assistance.”
Melina obediently turned in the direction he had pointed out.
“Don’t forget to put back your yashmak,” he called after her as she left him.
She was not away a long time. Only long enough to wash her hands and face and ease her bruised feet in the stone bowl of the fountain into which a trickle of water still poured ceaselessly from a broken dolphin.
She would have liked to undress and bathe completely, but she knew that such an act was unthinkable and was only too grateful that at least her hands and feet were, for the moment, clean and free of the dust that had caked them, making the skin even darker than Rasmin had stained it.
She was very thirsty, but she obeyed Bing’s instructions not to drink the water, not even daring to wet her lips in case typhoid or some other dread disease should be waiting to attack her.
It was then that she remembered who had kissed her lips last night as she lay drugged with sleep and exhaustion and a thrill ran through her at the thought that, once again, she had known the touch of his mouth.
On neither occasion had it been the kiss of a lover, but it was enough for her aching heart that Bing had given her his lips.
Melina had a sudden urgent desire to hurry back to him, but when she reached the pile of grass they had slept on, she saw that Bing was not alone.
She stopped still, frightened and disconcerted.
The man was young and he wore a robe of striped grey cotton. There was a red fez stuck jauntily on his head and on his arm was the official brown armband of a Government-appointed guide. The youth, for he was little more, and Bing were in deep conversation.
Melina stood irresolute until, as if he sensed her presence, Bing turned and saw her and beckoned her. She hurried towards them and saw the Arab’s eyes appraising her closely, which told her that he knew she was not a Moslem but a European and therefore could be stared at.
“This is Ahmed,” Bing said by way of introduction. “He could not come to us last night because his father felt that it would be unlucky to enter the sacred garden.”
Ahmed smiled, showing a flash of gleaming white teeth.
“My father is old and full of superstition,” he said in good English. “I know, because I am young and better educated, that such things are nonsense. The dead do not rise from their tombs and there are no ghosts, but my father still holds the money bags and so I must obey him!”
“It is enough that you have come today,” Bing said courteously. “Do you bring me news?”
Ahmed shook his head.
“We have no idea where he whom you seek can be found. Those who serve Moulay Ibrahim are well paid and also afraid. They do not talk.”
“Someone must know,” Bing said. “Do not tell me that the East has lost the cunning of the serpent or that things can happen that the marketplace will not be chattering about within a few hours.”
Ahmed glanced over his shoulder.
“There are persons it is unwise to ask questions to,” he said.
“Surely someone has seen the car arrive,” Bing insisted. “Even if they did not see the boy, there were two men in the car, which was a big expensive Mercedes, glittering with the badges of many countries. How could they pass unnoticed?”
Ahmed shrugged his shoulders.
“Undoubtedly it would have been seen, sir, but who would be brave enough to ask questions of those who would carry tales of their curiosity?”
It was obvious, Melina thought, that the youth was afraid. However willing he might be to help Bing, he had a sense of preservation which was not going to allow him to put his head in a noose by asking pertinent questions.
Bing obviously realised the same thing, because there was a long pause before he spoke again and then he said,
“Moulay Ibrahim himself has not arrived?”
“No, of that I am certain,” Ahmed answered. “It is easy to speak of him. He is a personality. Someone of great stature. He is generous too, to the dancers and beggars. They would have told if he had arrived.”
“We can but wait and hope that when he does come,” Bing said reflectively, “he will go to where the boy is.”
Ahmed shrugged his shoulders again.
“When Moulay Ibrahim comes to Marrakesh there are many places where he stays. He is building a villa, I understand, a very large important one, but it is not yet ready. He has friends. He stays with them, sometimes with one, sometimes with another.”
“Then keep a watch out for when he does arrive,” Bing ordered him.
“I will do that, sir. My father asked me to express his regret that we can do so little for you, but were you to come to our house, poor and frugal though it is, there would be much talk. You understand?”
“I understand,” Bing said.
Ahmed salaamed and Bing ceremoniously replied.
Then the youth went swiftly away, not leaving the garden through the hole in the wall through which Melina and Bing had come the night before but travelling along the wall in the opposite direction as though he wished to cover his tracks in case anyone had seen him arrive.
Bing’s mouth was a hard line of disappointment.
“What are we going to do now?” Melina asked.
“God knows,” Bing replied. “These people are spineless and afraid, yet one cannot blame them. Moulay Ibrahim is powerful and their King is far away.”
“You are sure the child is here somewhere?” Melina enquired.
“Sure of it,” Bing said positively. “Casablanca is too new a City and too French for Moulay Ibrahim to have the power and influence that he has here. No, I am convinced that he would keep to his own haunts. The difficulty is to find out where they might be.”
He walked a few paces up and down the garden and then said,
“Go and sit on the steps of the temple, Melina. If anyone comes when I am away, do not speak, hold out your hands supplicatingly as if you are a beggar. I shall not be gone long and I will bring you back food and something to drink.”
“I am so thirsty,” Melina said, “that if you don’t bring me back something I shall drink from the fountain.”
“That’s blackmail,” Bing replied lightly, “because to have you ill at this moment would be an inconvenience I cannot possibly afford.”
“Then bring me something quickly,” Melina smiled.
“Look after yourself,” Bing said quietly.
He looked down as he spoke into her eyes darkened by kohl. He had no idea until now how blue they were.
Just for a moment it seemed to Melina that he was about to say something of significance and then as if he thought better of it, she merely heard him whisper half beneath his breath,
“Allah take care of you, my dear!”
She wanted to reply to him, she wanted to say that it was he who must be taken care of, not her, but in a few strides he was out of earshot and she saw him push his way through the shrubs towards the hole in the wall.
It was then that she sank down on the cut grass they had slept on together all night and prayed, not to Allah but to God to whom she had said her prayers ever since she was a child.
‘Please, God, take care of him. Don’t let anything happen to him and, oh God, make him love me a little.’
She felt the tears trickle through her fingers with the intensity of her cry and she went on praying for a long time in the quietness and still of the garden.